The cloud computing concept has gained a lot of momentum in the last few years. Classification of the solution space has somewhat focused on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), which is typically associated with Amazon’s platform, and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), often associated with Salesforce Force.com and the aforementioned Google App Engine. In a previous post, I pointed to a short article that summarizes these terms.

A lot of debate has taken place around the economics of cloud computing, and around the advantages and disadvantages of the PaaS model. However, little discussion has taken place around additional (higher level; or: business) components that are needed to successfully run a SaaS business, in addition to the core infrastructure and the basic platform.

The diagram that follows is an outline of components that are part of the architecture of (almost) every SaaS business.